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Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

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Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

#91

Post by tooltalk »

ballenf wrote: post #87
newusertoday wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why is apple suing in 2017? why didn't they sued in 2007 at time of launch of iphone? Issue is way more complex in this fight. 1. Qc has more than 130k patents,licensee gets blanket protection for all.(one can argue about bundling though) 2. Qc,ericcson,nokia and other patent holders have cross licensing agreements with each other.This is to avoid negotiating individual contracts with every patent holder in a stan…

The article explicitly says Apple waited until they could get chips from another source, Intel. Their general counsel explicitly said they would have sued sooner, but were at Qualcomm's mercy and feared retaliation. Maybe that's revisionist history and seems unlikely to be so clearcut, but that's their story.

Intel Infineon has been around quite a while. Apple's lawsuit comes only after Apple as the article correctly notes conspired with Samsung to force the Korean regulators to go after Qualcomm. There are other backdrops, such as the SCOTUS's recent decision not to award damage on entire device willy-nilly (see Samsung vs Apple).

Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

#92

Post by threeseed »

newusertoday wrote: post #66
MBCook wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qualcomm agreed to only charge 50¢ per item (FRAND licensing) but is complaining Apple isn’t paying 20%. They’re violating an agreement. In the App Store Apple offered a deal and sticks to it. You may not need like it but they’re doing exactly what they agreed to.

So why is apple suing in 2017? why didn't they sued in 2007 at time of launch of iphone? Issue is way more complex in this fight. 1. Qc has more than 130k patents,licensee gets blanket protection for all.(one can argue about bundling though) 2. Qc,ericcson,nokia and other patent holders have cross licensing agreements with each other.This is to avoid negotiating individual contracts with every patent holder in a stan…

Talk about ignorance of history.

Apple in 2001 was posting losses and were an acquisition target. By 2007 they were just stabilising the company on the back of iPod but posting relatively small profits. It was the iPhone that propelled the company into being a huge, successful company we have today.

So why are they suing now ? Because they can afford to. They simply aren't the tiny, vulnerable company they were back in 2007 which Qualcomm could have crushed. And the world has changed such that phones are far more than just phones.

Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

#93

Post by pwinnski »

briandear wrote: post #62
mkhalil wrote: post #25

I love battles when you can't really feel sorry for either side. As much as I or anyone hate patent trolls, one can't sit here and complain that a percentage of the value isn't a fair price to pay if one thinks it's okay for Apple to charge Music + App devs 30% to improve their OS + provide content for it's users.

App developers are free to find customers elsewhere. Perhaps app developers could create their own distribution system that guarantees security, updates and ease of use and create a device upon which it can run. App developers can also handle the multiple country's tax laws, create a payment system and do all of that on their own as well. Apple devs don't have to deal with collecting taxes in the countries in which t…

People forget that 30% was lower than most comparable outlets prior to Apple's App Store. Competitors immediately slashed their own rates to 30% to match.

Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

#94

Post by MBCook »

tooltalk wrote: post #91
ballenf wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article explicitly says Apple waited until they could get chips from another source, Intel. Their general counsel explicitly said they would have sued sooner, but were at Qualcomm's mercy and feared retaliation. Maybe that's revisionist history and seems unlikely to be so clearcut, but that's their story.

Intel Infineon has been around quite a while. Apple's lawsuit comes only after Apple as the article correctly notes conspired with Samsung to force the Korean regulators to go after Qualcomm. There are other backdrops, such as the SCOTUS's recent decision not to award damage on entire device willy-nilly (see Samsung vs Apple).

‘Conspired’ to have regulators go after a patent monopolist for not following the terms they agreed to?

That’s not a conspiracy.

Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

#95

Post by pwinnski »

hajile wrote: post #44
dpark wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand what the problem is. Qualcomm invents something, patents it, and then they have a monopoly. Apple's assertion is that the pricing is not Fair or Reasonable, which Qualcomm agreed to as a concession to make their patents part of the cellular network standards. > Apple's answer should be to open their own EE labs and start inventing things and getting their own patents. Instead, they complain and g…

Qualcomm's R&D budget is around 25% of net sales. Google, Cisco, Intel, and Microsoft (for example) are considered big spenders, but they only spend 12-15% of net sales (apple spends 2.2% of net sales on R&D). Qualcomm sounds a lot more fair and reasonable than any of the other multi-billion dollar companies I know of.

Percentages for something like this are borderline-meaningless.

Qualcomm spends an average of 1.325B per quarter, and peaked in 2014 with 1.429B.[0]

Apple spends an average of 1.959B per quarter, but that has been steadily rising to 2.937B last quarter.[1]

[0] https://ycharts.com/companies/QCOM/r_and_d_expense [1] https://ycharts.com/companies/AAPL/r_and_d_expense

Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

#96

Post by TheSoftwareGuy »

danjoc wrote: post #29
yaantc wrote: post #6

That's a very one-sided pro-Qualcomm piece. The big issue with Qualcomm IP practice is that they don't charge IPR on the modem function, but over the whole device. So put the same modem in a cheap phone, or in an expensive laptop, and the IPR will be very different. This is really charging IPR on a lot of value completely unrelated to the modem. Historically, the cellular/3GPP world was very phone centric. The specs…

>So put the same modem in a cheap phone, or in an expensive laptop, and the IPR will be very different. This is really charging IPR on a lot of value completely unrelated to the modem. Pot, meet kettle. Apple charges 30% at the App store, whether I want to sell an app for $1 or $1000. Also, if Apple wanted, they could package the modem separately. Sell it for $50. Again, this mirrors Apple's advice to Samsung to buil…

>I really can't feel sorry for Apple.

And that's exactly where you're looking at this wrong. it's not just Apple that loses out because of this, it's consumer's at large.

Likewise, the same thing happens with apps, consumers must pay more money for apps which will have less revenue to invest in themselves.

That's the thing about unfair economic practices, it never just hurts the people directly involved, but also the massive amount of people indirectly involved.

Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

#97

Post by zaroth »

Aloha wrote: post #34
danjoc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So put the same modem in a cheap phone, or in an expensive laptop, and the IPR will be very different. This is really charging IPR on a lot of value completely unrelated to the modem. Pot, meet kettle. Apple charges 30% at the App store, whether I want to sell an app for $1 or $1000. Also, if Apple wanted, they could package the modem separately. Sell it for $50. Again, this mirrors Apple's advice to Samsung to buil…

You don't have to sell your app in the Apple ecosystem - its very hard to build a modern mobile device without Qualcomm IP.

The stronger argument I think is that Apple did not get its App Store put into a global standard which can't be avoided in exchange for promising to let people sells apps on it under FRAND terms.

Apple can do whatever it wants on its own App Store. It's their device and they aren't a monopoly nor is it anti-competitive for them to charge a high fee on their own store.

But Qualcomm IP is part of the LTE standard on the express condition that they will license their share of LTE mandatory features fairly. I don't think it's fair to take a percentage cut of the whole package price for an IP license that's part of a global standard.

Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

#98

Post by tooltalk »

dpark wrote: post #15
jeffdavis wrote: post #13

I don't understand what the problem is. Qualcomm invents something, patents it, and then they have a monopoly. Apple's answer should be to open their own EE labs and start inventing things and getting their own patents. Instead, they complain and go to court. Of course, that assumes the patents are good ones.

> I don't understand what the problem is. Qualcomm invents something, patents it, and then they have a monopoly. Apple's assertion is that the pricing is not Fair or Reasonable, which Qualcomm agreed to as a concession to make their patents part of the cellular network standards. > Apple's answer should be to open their own EE labs and start inventing things and getting their own patents. Instead, they complain and g…

Yes, Apple has made the same assertion against every FRAND patent holders for many, many years-- without zero evidence. This time around, it's slightly different in that Apple successfully engineered a scheme in which KFTC convicted Qualcomm of anti-competitive licensing practices.

Apple is late to the wireless game and now they are trying to find a way to pay as little as possible while not contributing virtually nothing to it and being one of the largest benefactors of the tech.

Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

#99

Post by mcculley »

pwinnski wrote: post #90
mcculley wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that. I was wondering why Dell ships laptops with an LTE modem and Apple ships every mobile device except a MacBook with an LTE modem. It makes sense if it is some stupid negotiation tactic. I was wondering why they would not put something in so obvious to the benefit of users.

I think the key there is that Dell ships with an LTE modem, a separate device with a separate price. They pay royalties to Qualcomm on the price of the modem. Apple would never (for some value of never) ship a laptop with an external device like that. The LTE is either baked into the laptop (at which point Qualcomm would demand a % of the entire laptop's sale price), or it's not included at all. They choose not at al…

Dell, HP, and Lenovo ship laptops with a built-in LTE modem.

Re: Apple and Qualcomm’s Billion-Dollar War Over an $18 Part

#100

Post by [deleted] »

yaantc wrote: post #6

That's a very one-sided pro-Qualcomm piece. The big issue with Qualcomm IP practice is that they don't charge IPR on the modem function, but over the whole device. So put the same modem in a cheap phone, or in an expensive laptop, and the IPR will be very different. This is really charging IPR on a lot of value completely unrelated to the modem. Historically, the cellular/3GPP world was very phone centric. The specs…

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